Monday 11 December 2017

Children and Cooking.

I really enjoy baking with the children. I've always enjoyed baking sweet treats more than I have cooking savoury food......I leave that to my husband (trust me, he's much better at cooking than me!). I wish my cooking skills were a bit more finely tuned, baking I can do but cooking is just not my thing. However, I really don't want this to rub off on my 2 and both myself and my husband try to encourage them in the kitchen and get them involved in cooking.

My husband has recently finished building a stone pizza oven outside (lovingly named Penny, no idea why) and both Alfie and Elarna love it. Pizza is one of their favourite foods and being able to prepare the dough, make the base, use home grown produce to make the sauce and then decorate their pizzas is such a fun and positive thing to do. It's such a lovely thing to bond with them while teaching them where their food has come from and what we can create. I can guarantee if we say home made pizzas are on the menu it'll be a winner. The only thing is that the pizza oven isn't quite finished yet and we need to decide on some decent kitchen work surfaces so we can prepare everything outside (in the warmer months!).

Image from Pixabay


One of my favourite recipe's to do with them is chewy choc chip cookies, oh these are the most delicious and tasty cookies ever and they are so simple to make. If you fancy making them here is the recipe below: 

250g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarb of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
170g unsalted butter (melted)
200g dark brown soft sugar
100g caster sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 Egg
1 Egg Yolk
325g choc chips (I use a mix of milk and white choc)

The method is super simple!

1. Preheat oven to 170 degrees C/Gas 3
2. Grease baking tray or line with parchment
3. Sift together flour, bicarb and salt, set to the side for later
4. In a bowl cream together melted butter, brown sugar and caster sugar until well blended. Beat in vanilla, egg and egg yolk until light and creamy.
5. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended, stir in the choc chips with a wooden spoon.
6. Drop cookie dough onto the baking trays with around 4 drops of tablespoons of mixture per cookie. Don't flatten the dough and make sure you leave enough room for the cookies to spread.
7. Bake for around 15-17 minutes or until golden.
* If you don't use all the dough you can freeze some for another day *

So if you fancy trying these out with the kids I can thoroughly recommend, they are delicious. You can fiddle around with the flavours too if you fancy, adding some all spice or cinnamon would make them lovely and festive, or adding raisins instead of chocolate could be a nice alternative. 

Do you have a favourite recipe? Do share!

* Collaborative post. 


No comments:

Post a Comment

I absolutely love it when someone leaves me a comment, I will always reply back when possible! You can also follow me on twitter for more beautiful chatter: @Helsy_1983